Sanctions loom in the face of shortfalls

Nine Clarke County elementary schools not living up to Title I standards

Posted: Tuesday, March 26, 2002

By Kate Carterkcarter@onlineathens.com

Nine of the 13 Clarke County School District's elementary schools have failed to meet federal student-achievement standards for at least the past two years, according to information released recently by the state Department of Education.

The information details the schools' performances in relation to federal Title I standards. Title I is a funding program based on poverty rates in a given school. Funding correlates with the number of free or reduced-price lunches served.

Under Title I standards, the nine schools have been placed into a category dubbed ''school improvement,'' meaning that the district will have to pay transportation costs in the 2002-03 school year for students interested in switching to higher-performing schools.

Seven of those schools have just one more year to make improvements before they face even greater federally imposed sanctions, which could include being turned over to the state, or being forced to become a publicly or privately-run charter school.

According to the Title I data released by the state Department of Education, two schools previously in the low-performance category -- Cleveland Road and Fowler Drive Elementary schools -- showed improvement, while Timothy Road and Whitehead Road Elementary schools were moved into the low-performance category.

Currently, all 13 of the schools district's elementary schools, as well as Burney-Harris-Lyons Middle School, receive federal Title I funds.

And with the nearly $3 million that Clarke County reaps in Title I funds each year to improve academics for low-performing students, come federal standards and accountability for dollars spent, measured each year by students' standardized test scores.

Title I troubles

Georgia has 1,063 schools that receive Title I federal funds targeted to poor areas where U.S. Department of Education regulations require annual standardized tests. Some 436 Georgia schools are in the ''need improvement'' category, including these Clarke County schools:

Alps Road Elementary

Barnett Shoals Elementary

Barrow Elementary

Chase Street Elementary

Fourth Street Elementary

Gaines Elementary

Timothy Elementary

Whitehead Elementary

Winterville Elementary

Title I standards will be modified July 1 by President Bush's education reform bill. Under the new Title I standards, the school district will be forced to pay for transportation costs for students who transfer out of low-performing schools, and to offer tutorial services to students in low-performing schools.

As of July 1, the school district must allocate 20 percent of its Title I funding each year for transportation and tutorial costs.

According to Clarke Schools Superintendent Lewis Holloway, the district's school choice program, now more than five years old, should alleviate demands to switch schools.

''They've got that right now,'' said Holloway, referring to parents' current right to send their children to the elementary school of their choice. ''I really don't see a mass exodus happening.''

And while the law mentions the possibility of travel vouchers to schools in surrounding counties, Barbara Duke, the director of Clarke County's instructional support programs -- which include Title I -- said Clarke County has too many options to need to rely on surrounding counties.

Perhaps more worrisome, according to Holloway, is that Bush's new Title I standards force school districts into extreme measures if the schools fail to improve performance for four years in a row, during years prior to or after the new law was signed. After the fourth year in which any school has failed to improve, a school district must enter a stage of planning for restructuring of those schools in need. The five options provided to a school district are to create a public charter school; a private charter school; replace all staff, including the principal; turn the school over to be run by the state, or to overhaul the school governance and curriculum.

Seven of the district's schools are in their third year of low-performance, which means that under the new Title I standards, one of six corrective actions must be taken. Those span from the implementation of a scientific, researched-based curriculum in reading and math, to hiring an outside expert to help advise the school on how to improve scores.

School districts can choose which, and how many, schools receive Title I allocations, as long as they qualify. But Duke said that removing schools from the Title I program in order to escape possible sanctions is not the answer for Clarke County.

''Unequivocally, we would not remove Title I service from a school to avoid sanctions,'' Duke said. ''However, we will look at whether we are using our resources effectively. We are going to look at early, effectively and efficiently focusing our resources so that we maximize resources and figure out why we have so many schools still in school improvement.''

Duke noted that the school district had, earlier this school year, formed a committee to investigate Title I programs and student performance.

Holloway and Alps Road Elementary School Principal Sherrie Gibney-Sherman are concerned about the criteria used to judge Title I schools. For elementary schools, only the fourth-grade Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) is considered. In addition, under the old and new Title I law, the number of students performing poorly on the test must decrease by 5 percent each year, in both mathematics and reading.

The most recent ruling of low-performing schools is based on scores from the 2000-01 school year.

But Gibney-Sherman said that the state criterion exam standards were retroactive -- teachers and students did not know they would be counted as such until after the exam was completed. Gibney-Sherman said that tests should track each student, year-by-year, in order to get a more accurate look at performance.

''We need to examine the state's Title I evaluation plan to make sure that it's giving schools and the community the information that they need for honest program improvement,'' said Gibney-Sherman.

According to Holloway, both Alps Road and Barrow elementary schools were judged as needing improvement on the basis of just a handful of students who had not passed the mathematics section during the last administration of the CRCT. Holloway noted that the district's Title I status is scheduled for an upcoming school board discussion.

''I'd rather they (Title I standards) look at a whole school, not just one section of the population,'' said Holloway. ''That seems unfair to judge. How can you punish an entire school showing improvement?''